


Weapons of Choice

by RoAnshi



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Biting, Blood, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoAnshi/pseuds/RoAnshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve tries to give Loki what he needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weapons of Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missbecky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/gifts).



_Flick!_

And bladed silver flashed, pulling against skin against muscle against ligaments and veins, digging all the way to the whiteness of bone where he carved down into the marrow, and blood poured over his arm, spilling and dripping to add to the growing pool so deliciously carmine against the pale tile floor.

Loki hissed, tipped back his head, and smiled at the self-inflicted agony until, too soon, it began to ease.

Magic green as poison curled around his arm, delved into the wound—even that hurt ( _because he made it so_ )—repairing the damage from the inside out, suturing with fine golden threads to draw the rent flesh together and allow the healing spells time to work and return at least his appearance to normal.

A dark smile at the newly perfect ( _save for the stains from the bloodletting_ ) skin, and then he did it again.

And again and again, relishing the pain, the damage, the willful and satisfying destruction of his physical self.

He paused, breathing hard, for an instant pulling back in still unfilled need.  He wished to take it further, but did he dare, for he knew it might not end with satiation and calm, but with himself in pieces—either physical or metaphorical, he did not know which, and did not care to find out especially as he was already broken inside and it would take so little—

 But perhaps just a _bit_ more…. With the knife-tip, he penetrated his upturned palm, then with a hard thrust shoved the blade all the way through.  He sucked in a breath at the sheer _beauty_ of it as he tilted his hand back and forth, relishing the gleam of his sharpest knife piercing him.

And then of course he could only _twist_ it, widening the hole through himself, awestruck at how as each tendon snapped, another finger went lax and powerless, until they all were dangling useless and covered with gore at the end of his hand.

His breathing came harder faster shallower until his head was swimming and his narrowing vision flamed to hot sparks, and his legs were weak at last from blood loss and blood lust and the pure delight of how it all _felt--_

_“Loki!”_

And Steve suddenly had him in a paralyzing embrace, and Loki didn’t have to wonder how he had missed the door being kicked down, for his rational mind had been altogether elsewhere at the time.

“Why?  Why do you do this to yourself?”  Anger—and something else Loki could not interpret—twisted Steve’s All-American face, set his jaw and thinned his lips and narrowed his eyes so that he looked much more like a furious avenging angel than that great savior of the red white and blue, Captain America.

“Because,” Loki swallowed, voice rough.  “I must.”

“No.  You don’t.”  Steve’s voice was raw again.  “How many times have I told you? You can always come to me when you feel like this.”

“Would that I could.  There are few ways I can… tame myself.  You are not one of them.  I thought you understood.”

A long minute of silence, broken only by the erratic sound of Loki’s irregular breathing.  Once it had calmed, Steve finally released him, commanding, “Take that out.”

So Loki did, quietly and efficiently working the knife back out through his hand, and then stared with great satisfaction at how he could actually peer through the hole left behind.  Quite pleased, he held his damaged hand up before his face, made eye contact with Steve through the bloody gap in the center, and then slowly winked at him.

Steve did not even blanch, and that sorely disappointed Loki.  “Captain, you are far too strong and good for me.”

“Fix it.”  His tone brooked no compromise.  Loki sighed, put-upon, and worked a languid, inefficient spell to seal this wound, taking his sweet time and allowing himself to enjoy every sensation, when feeling poured back into each finger with the burn of fire and the bone fragments from shattered metacarpals burrowed with agonizing slowness through his flesh to finally reassemble.    

“Now wash up.”  Steve followed him into the bathroom, and was he making sure that Loki did not get into any more “mischief”?—and this concept almost drove him to wild laughter that might never stop.  Yet he obediently ran warm water into the sink, found the soap, and lathered up from his shoulders to his fingertips to wipe away every stain.  He dug under his nails with a steel file to remove all the caked blood, rinsed until the reddish water in the sink ran clear down the drain, and held out his dripping— _perfect_ —arms to Steve for approval.

Steve said nothing, only handed him a towel while never taking his eyes off him.  Loki delicately patted himself dry, then deliberately dropped the towel on the floor.

“Now sit down and… _talk_ to me.”  A strong hand in the small of Loki’s back propelled him forward, out of the bathroom, through the short hallway, and into the sitting area of Loki’s suite.  One sharp thrust and Loki was sprawling on the couch.  Almost primly he arranged himself properly, ankles crossed and hands folded innocently in his lap, staring straight ahead.

Steve’s weight settled beside him.  But Loki—of course—had naught to say, nor any intention of even trying.  Frustration rolled off Steve like waves pushed by a storm far off shore.

Finally Steve broke the silence.  “I don’t… I don’t even… Loki, do you know what it feels like to me when I see you….”  His words faded away and his breath hitched.  Loki wondered if he might waste some tears over all this.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Steve tried to go on, but uncomfortable silence fell again, dragged out for too many long minutes.

Loki finally broke it, a mocking sing-song, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

And Steve _moved_ then, abruptly catching up Loki in an embrace bruisingly tight this time, with all the Captain’s serum-enhanced strength behind it.  Not only did it make Loki’s bones creak, it _hurt_.

Loki found that quite satisfying, actually.

Steve captured Loki’s chin in an unforgiving grip, forcing him to turn until they were face-to-face, the motion so abrupt and violent that Loki felt his neck muscles strain and protest against how they had been wrenched into obedience.  But following was not the kiss Loki might have expected; instead, Steve pressed his mouth against Loki’s, and bit down, brutally so, on his lower lip, enough that Loki could feel the dents Steve’s teeth were leaving, feel the flesh swelling around them and the blood-bruises rising to stain the marks purple. And he didn’t stop until all of Loki’s mouth was raw and abused, every nerve compressed and tingling like an electric shock.

And then Steve’s strong hand slid inside Loki’s tunic, as it had so many times, but now the typical tenderness was absent from his touch, and instead of caressing the planes of Loki’s chest, he hooked his fingers into claws and raked his nails sharp enough to _mark_ Loki, from one shoulder all the way down to his opposite hip. One time, two times, even three times he repeated it, until Loki could feel tiny droplets of blood rising to fill the raw welts now cross-crossing his chest.  The final time, Steve’s hand lingered against the sharp jut of Loki’s hipbone, palm pressing against it and his fingers curling inward until his nails dug deep red crescents around the arch of bone. Steve suddenly shifted his angle, pushing in a certain way until Loki felt that the bone might pop from its cradle. Already his leg was going numb.

Loki sucked in a breath, quivering, and leaned in to whisper into Steve’s ear, “ _Do it_.”

“No.” Instead he reached to grab Loki’s hair, forcing his head to again turn against his will, and sank his teeth into Loki’s earlobe, biting and grinding, until Loki let out a cry in actual fear that Steve just might sever the tender flesh.  The release of his teeth was somehow even more painful than their bite, but Loki had almost no time to appreciate the sensation before Steve was forcing his head to tilt the opposite way and biting down again, and somehow even harder, on his other lobe.

Then the pressure on his ear ended, but now more nails were scraping insistently along his skin, this time at his throat. They traced the lines of blood vessels, teasing them toward the surface, where they rolled just under Loki’s skin, vulnerable.  Steve’s mouth followed the nail-tracks, but there was no tender suckling along the path to ease the hot pain, but instead teeth nipping wherever the rough rake of nails had made Loki the most sensitive to sensation.  Loki let his head loll back, and he moaned, “ _Yes.”_

He would be striped, he would be black-and-blue in the morning, but this he would not heal and bespell every mark and wound away but instead cherish them as he looked at himself in the mirror, until they faded.

“No.”  Steve withdrew as quickly as he had attacked, falling back as if drained in battle by a sworn and powerful enemy.  And now it was his turn to breathe heavily, and when Loki dared to steal a glance at him, Steve looked not only completely exhausted but sick as well, as if he were trying not to vomit. 

Wetness was streaking his cheeks.  “Loki,” he managed ( _and Loki saw that Steve was in his own way now as broken as he_ ), “just stop this.  All this.  Please.” He gestured helplessly at the pool of blood on the floor, drying rusty around the edges, still garnet red and open-wound raw at the center.  “If you can’t do it for you, do it for me. Because I can’t….  This is so hard.”  He drew a deep breath and held it far too long.  “I can try to help… whatever you want… even this.”  He drew a shaking, far-too-soft fingertip over the ruin of Loki’s mouth, and Loki could not hold back a whimper... or a twisting smile.  “But can’t I be enough instead of…?”

_Darkness sang in his head, mocking his name, insisting never never NEVER, not even close not even by half, but he must, he must not, for the good Captain Steve Rogers’ sake as well as his own, whatever that mattered…what was he to do?_

He tempered that ragged smile for Steve’s sake, containing somehow the mania lurking so close behind it. “I suppose,” he at last managed, pressing his forehead into Steve’s shoulder, “that we can at least try.”


End file.
